On the Record: RV-7—Florida

Feb. 18, 2016

The pilot reported that there were no mechanical or weather issues as he was attempting to land. After a go-around on the initial attempt, and with dusk approaching, he decided to make an abbreviated traffic pattern and circle back around to land on the runway. He apparently mistook a parallel access road for the runway. The airplane struck three mailboxes, a basketball hoop, phone lines, and a car, and then came to rest inverted.

NTSB Final Report

FAA
Ron Wanttaja
Ron Wanttaja
Ron Wanttaja is a retired space systems engineer. During a 40-year career, he helped design, build, test, launch, and operate 18 spacecraft, including the International Space Station. On the aviation side, he has owned a Bowers Fly Baby since 1996 and flew the original prototype for seven years before acquiring his own. He lives just outside of Portland, Oregon, with his wife, romance novelist Lisa McAllister.

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Wunderdog
Wunderdog
3 months ago

Well…this guy did the GA community no favors

Bill B
Bill B
3 months ago

Sounds like the first link in the accident chain was him taking off.

Randall Henderson
Randall Henderson
3 months ago

Jeez tough crowd. Reading the full report, there’s more to this story than is in the short article. Not that it makes the pilot look a lot better but nevertheless it’s, good to have all the facts before passing judgement.

Frank Vincent Tino
Frank Vincent Tino
3 months ago

In the pilot’s initial verbal statement to the Florida State Trooper that was the first on scene of the upside-down RV, he stated that there were no anomalies involved with the aircraft whatsoever. The engine he reported was operating normally and the airframe was as designed.
in the later NTSB interview and report, the pilot states that he attempted a go around but there was no power to affect that and he had racked it around to fly an abbreviated pattern to the landing runway but mistook a parallel road for the runway.

This occurred in 2016.

Sounds like a stall/spin accident if you ask me.

rpstrong
rpstrong
Reply to  Frank Vincent Tino
3 months ago

My understanding is that in a spin, the aircraft’s path is essentially vertical. But in this case he took out “three mailboxes, a basketball hoop, phone lines, and a car”, and still had sufficient energy to flip over something (perhaps the car?).

Sounds like an awful lot of horizontal motion for it to even sound like a stall/spin accident.

Frank Vincent Tino
Frank Vincent Tino
Reply to  rpstrong
3 months ago

However, look at the photo–the aircraft is wedged in between a tight space in the house’s yard with a narrow perimeter which is the width of the wingspan and the closely spaced mailbox, a basketball hoop, the overhead connection line of the house phone running across the driveway from the pole at StreetSide to the house and of course the car which is in the driveway that the plane landed upon. All of those objects struck are in a tight radius, being the width of the plane’s wingspan. It looks like a stall/spin accident to me and because of his already low altitude, it did not achieve the higher rotational spins of a higher altitude.